E-Mail in Academia: Expectations, Use, and Instructional Impact.

By Meredith Weiss and Dana Hanson-Baldauf “The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate,” claimed theologian and educator Joseph Priestly.1 Born in 1733, Priestly could hardly have imagined the Internet, e-mail, and instant messaging, although his prophetic statement presaged a dilemma now faced on college campuses worldwide. The popularity of and reliance on emergent computermediated communication technologies such as instant messaging, blogs, and social networks have arguably widened the generation gap between faculty and traditional undergraduate students. Marc Prensky defined this generational technology divide by coining the terms digital natives and digital immigrants. He wrote,